Gigabyte U2442N Review

What is cpu temps like while gaming?

 

it depends of a game,

in BF3, after 1 hour of playing, i had 82 max, but avg it was around75 celzius. Its also affected by overclocked GPU, since they have a partly common cooling.

 

What i want to know if you go as high as 660m clocks.. is the performance gains the same? even though we have ddr3 instead of ddr5?

cause they are all the same card just different clocks and memory..

 

It makes a difference, I scored 2300 in 3dmark11 at 1000Mhz,
while 660m score over 2500 at 960 Mhz (which is max turbo freq.)

NVIDIA GeForce GT 640M video card benchmark result - Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3517U CPU @ 1.90GHz,GIGABYTE U2442 score: P2302 3DMarks

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660M - Notebookcheck.net Tech

 

Can anyone confirm which LAN adapter and Wireless LAN adapter is installed? Wondering about hackintosh compatibility.

Whats the max safe OC for the GPU? Can you get near 650m performance? Do I need to use a modded BIOS or can you do it using a desktop app?

 

The ram is 1333? I always thought it was 1600

 

RAM support is up to 1600 but the included units are 1333, you can replace them though.

I got an answer from Gigabyte, I had to disable "Smart Cooling", now my CPU gets a 7.1 score on WPI (RAM is getting 7.5 now).

Has anyone made a modded bios for the latest firmware (0FA) with 1000MHz clock for GPU? What else could be boosted with a mod?

 

Quick Question about the keyboard. What is the feedback like? Do the keys shift from side to side in their sockets? Could I use this reasonably on a dirt road in a 3rd world country riding in a Van with leaf spring suspension (the same as ancient chariots)

Also is it just me or does that bezel look extremely thick compared to the rest of the screen? I won't complain but does it just look standard in person? As long as it protects the screen a little bit I don't really mind. Also I have yet to see and screenshots and of the screen in use with windows 7.

How does brightness fare on this model?

Ty for taking time out to answer these!

 

Rally vans! I like your creativity I think it should be fine as long as you don't go on very high jumps.

 

I have just received my U2442V and so far my only complaint is that the fan just about never stops! Its really not that hot but it just keeps going and going. I have a Lenovo x301 and it is completely quiet but it gets hotter too. I think I could stand a bit more heat to have complete silence. The battery life doesnt seem to great either - I think I got a bit over 2 hours doing basic web browsing. I was hoping for 4-5. I think Gigabyte needs to tone down the fan a bit - its chewing the battery unnecessarily. I have everything set to power saver and its still using the fan and draining the battery. Im pretty sure these can be fixed with bios updates though.

One last thing - is it me or is the Gigabyte logo on the lid upside down? normally when you close the lid the logo should be facing up but its facing down on mine

 

I've ordered a V model from excaliber and it's on its way. Looking forward to picking it up.

 

previous posts suggest decent battery times..but this seems to be bad.

can someone who owns the N model put up some stats for the battery based on their experience please. i want to buy the N model and would like to know about the battery times and are there any applications to control the fan speed or something like that.

thanks!!

 

here are my 3Dmark 11 results. It's free basic version...and laptop settings have not been touched. BTW if it fails during the test..probably screen saver kicking on.

NVIDIA GeForce GT 640M video card benchmark result - Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3517U CPU @ 1.90GHz,GIGABYTE U2442 score: P1849 3DMarks

 

With office work, WLAN, and 40% brightness (which is by far enough), I would say almost 5 hours (this is in good agreement with what others have reported).

 

ok installed MSI AB, changed settings to GPU Clock 759 Mhz ,Memory 1000Mhz, Boost 844 Mhz

NVIDIA GeForce GT 640M video card benchmark result - Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3517U CPU @ 1.90GHz,GIGABYTE U2442 score: P2151 3DMarks

GPU temp 69.0c max

 

I received my U2442V-CF1 from excaliberpc today and everything seems fine except wireless connectivity. Every time I try to connect to my home Optimum Online wireless (sitting 15 feet from the router in plain sight), I get a message "Connection Excellent - No or Limited Connectivity." I have three other computers running Win XP-SP3: a home desktop PC and 2 laptops, a Dell Latitude and Lenovo ThinkPad...all of them connect to my home network normally and blazingly fast (as expected). Not this machine...if it connects to the Web at all, its like a 56K dialup. When I try Windows 'troubleshooting,' it tells me 'limited Internet connectivity.' The few times it did connect, it loaded web pages VERRRY slowly. I turned off my other machines and restarted the modem and router 3x. Each of the other machines connects just fine, but the U2442V keeps telling me "Connection Excellent - No or Limited Connectivity." Down in the lower right hand corner near the time, there's the indicator for the wireless and sometimes it displays an 'excellent' with 5 bars or it shows 5 bars with a yellow exclamation point superimposed over them.

I was going to take it to the local MicroSoft store to have a Crucial 256Gb SSD installed, but is there a possibility I got a lemon? I have a bad back and wanted a good lightweight reliable ultrabook for work. Before I give up and return this (and I REALLY wanted to love this machine), I thought I'd turn to the gurus here.

Full disclosure: since I was planning to take it to the MS Store and have Windows 7 Professional installed and Office 2010 as well, I did not install the included Gigbyte Utilities CD. Are there drivers on this CD that must be installed first in order for the wireless to work properly or should the U2442V being able to start up and configure to run right out of the box.

Call me disillusioned.

Also, I noticed that the item could only be returned for excaliburPC for CREDIT per their RMA policy: General Return Policy

For us to stay competitive, offer the best service and the lowest price, we follow our return policy strictly and do not make any exceptions. EXcaliberPC.com does not offer a money-back guarantee on any product. Shipping is non-refundable under all circumstances, an exception may be made if EXcaliberPC.com made an error in the entering the address or shipping method, but only for an adjustment.

 

Sounds like you have a bad wireless nic. The first thing I did was re install Winows 7, I didn't need Gigabyte's DVD. All the drivers are on their website.

 

Hey Rob,

This sounds more like a driver issue than anything. I would try reinstalling the WLAN driver and restarting to see if that fixes the problem. I think I saw that gigabyte has the most recent drivers up on their website.

 

Downloaded a clean install of Win7 and updated ALL latest drivers from GIGABYTE website (on another machine to a flash drive). Installed and re-booted as directed.

All other PCs working perfectly...this machine, after running diagnostics, is saying "Your broadband modem is experiencing connectivity issues" (when I know it's not, otherwise none of my other machines would maintain their uber-fast Web connections).

Back it goes......and now have to select from EXcaliberPC.com's MEH selection, because they don't refund. Even if it's a bad device, they make YOU pay for return shipping. #9 on their RMA FAQ: Customers must pay for return shipping on all returns, including DOA product.

 

Always always always whenever you get a PC make sure you check your power plan settings and adjust them to you. If it is on power saving then it'll be the slowest. Go ahead and put it on maximum performance or if on battery medium.

 

Tried this twice...no luck. Back it goes. Appreciate the advice.

 

Sometimes it happens.. You getting a replacement?

 

If you order from ExcaliberPC, you get either credit or replacement. If the product is defective, no credit, they force you to take a replacement. Be VERY aware of their return policies before using them.

This machine is backordered indefinitely.

 

Already ordered from dynamism. They seem a little bit better.

 

Guys did anyone figured out how to turn off those LED indicators? They are quite annoying in the night and while matching movies

 

Just got my V model in the mail. So far, I've been blown away. It's fast, and everything on it seems to work. It didn't come with too much bloatware either, which is nice. This is my first ultrabook and I'm also impressed that something this powerful is so thin and light.

I've also noticed that the fans run frequently, but for the past year, I've been using a Vaio F, which sounds like an aircraft APU and does all manner of incessant oscillating and whistling. I'm still gonna track the threads here and hope for a BIOS update or fan utility to tone the noise down. The keyboard and track pad will take some getting used to, since both are a bit smaller and closer to each other than what I'm accustomed to.

Overall experience ordering from excaliberpc was positive. They did call to confirm my identity, but this was after their website charged my card and then somehow reversed the charge before they called. I'd never seen a merchant do this. Their website said that this happens when the credit card billing address and the shipping address are different, but in fact both were the same in my case. They were very polite and respectful on the phone, but I just found the identity thing to be weird and I'm really glad this thing works so far, because I'd hate to RMA it under their policy.

 

So I've had this laptop for a few days now. I mostly like the laptop. I really like that it has the power in such a small form factor
A few complaints:
1) Fan is ALWAYS running. Fans are getting annoying and I really wish there was a way to turn them off or put them on a low setting. If anyone knows how to fix this, I'd appreciate it.
2) My battery is draining quickly. I'm getting 2 hours of battery time on web surfing (no video). Not the 4 hours that others are reporting.
3) I set my laptop to disable the touchpad when I connect the mouse using the ELAN touchpad software. This doesn't seem to always be working. I think it worked initially, and then suddenly stopped.
4) Screen is just so-so. Colors seem somewhat muted. Anyway to make colors more vibrant?

 

Other things I noticed:
1) Sound is not very impressive at all. My girlfriend's new Acer TimelineU laptop has much better sound. Sounds lacks depth.
2) Touchpad randomly stops working. Really strange.

 

Sound doesn't get very loud and when it does it lacks bass/sounds tinny/distorted if you know what I mean. OK If you have a set of speakers I guess.

I read a review that it might be possible to improve by using the thx sound settings, but I don't think they mentioned what/how

 

Yeah, I repeat: We NEED some software to control those fans that are always starting to run when it's toally unnecessary.

 

This is from the notebookreview

Totally agree. I have my U2442N connected via HDMI to my Onkyo amp anyway (for music or watching films). But I wont be doing that when gaming. I do have some old speakers I could digg out.

Bit disappointed tho if you intend on watching say a movie or listening to music if you take it with you.

For me I always compare this to the Sony S13P, which apparently has awful speakers.

But to be honest I am using this as a desktop replacement and it is doing a great job so far.

 

Load up Speedfan, submit report to developer

I have done that, we need to show him that there is more than just me requesting it!!

 

Wow just listened to some music on the internal speakers and it hurt my ears it was that bad..

 

Good news is, using the THX speaker utility I can boost sound levels quite a lot, so at least I can hear quite loud

 

Running into a problem here - I have VGA connected to my LED monitor, HDMI to my amp. When I enable my amp, the internal laptop display turns off. When I turn on the internal laptop display, the HDMI turns off.

I assumed that this thing supported 3 outputs? (internal, VGA and HDMI simultaneously?)

 

Sent him a report. I hope more guys start begging him.

 

I think people are only able to get 4hrs with the I-7U
You could get low-voltage ram and use only 1 drive... uhmm if fan is that much of a problem you could just unplug it when you don't need it.
Disable touchpad in Bios.

 

My battery indicator has predicted mostly 4 hour life during normal browsing operations. Right now it says about 5 hours, but I've seen it show as low as 2.5 hours. I currently have passive system cooling policy enabled, 30% brightness and bluetooth disabled but otherwise no changes to the factory state. I haven't tried running the battery down yet.

 

Alternate OS sub-thread!!!

Mountain Lion - Installed, HD4000 working (but can only get 1 monitor working). nVidia 640M not working at least not without some serious hacking
Ethernet works. Wireless doesn't. Can't get sound to work, will also need some hacking.

uBuntu 12.10 Beta 1 - ran it from the USB stick, looks and runs beautifully. Sound/Wireless (not tested)/LAN all seem to work. Need to install the nVidia drivers. Ran out of time for this

No fan control due to unsupported ITE8518

 

Sound/Wireless works along with the 640m

 

Are we talking linux? On ubuntu when I install the nvidia drivers I get no taskbar. Only thing I can do is goto console. It might be 12.10 issue

 

So how do I open this thing without damaging it?

 

I'm on Cinnamon and it works fine.

 

I received my U2442N yesterday. It is mightily awesome so far. I've taken the GPU core up 135Mhz from stock as per the Nvidia allowed limit and am happy with that. Adding the boost on top of this increase means a 845Mhz core clock when gaming and P2005 when I ran 3Dmark11. I'm not experienced enough to be flashing BIOS - never done anything like that.

Not exactly a modern benchmark but I ran Age of Empires III on it and maxed everything out @1280*1024, apart from AA which was left on low. It ran very slick - felt like 60fps most of the time and maybe 40fps during intensive combat. Haven't installed FRAPS yet. Playing this the temp was 60 C max for the GPU after an hour's play.

Coming from an Acer 4810tz there were a few things I really liked that I wasn't expecting - mainly due to the Acer being cheap. The auto screen brightness, auto keyboard backlight brightness, the sturdiness of the entire machine and the speed of the SSD are things that really impressed me on initial use.

The fans periodically whirring up during browsing is not an annoyance for me although yes, it would benefit from being addressed - it would also benefit battery life. Might post some more thoughts after I've used it a bit more. I've only been plugged in so far so we shall see how it performs away from the socket.

And finally I got rather lucky with the price. It's the version with SSD and HDD so it was retailing for £999 on Amazon UK. They knocked £130 ($210) off the price for damaged packaging. The outer box had been scraped and knocked, while the inner box was perfect, as were the contents.

 

did u guys see this post from rog website

How About A 14 Inch G Series Gaming Laptop? - Republic of Gamers

 

Maybe not an apt comparison, but the 15" G55 is 8lbs. I'm having trouble thinking how they'll trim 1" off the display and 5lbs off the chassis. But if they do I need to know HOW because I got 5 on my own chassis that needs trimming.

Seriously, that top picture suggests a 1"+ hinge assembly for the display. I don't think it'll be a thin-and-light, let alone an ultrabook.

-Matt

 

delete, wrong

 

not a pure ultrabook for sure , atleast we get a better cooling system, sme mass will be thr but overall it should be somewhat light and portable, ive seen and holded the old g series laptops such as g53 or g73 and compared to the new g55 and g75, the new ones have trimmed it enough to lighter weight despite the cooling system and the blue ray drive, i believe asus can make this 14inch,somehow have a thin profile, i dont even think it will have a dvd drive too..lets see wt it turns out to be...i stll got tym till december

 

they actually launched an ultrabook last month , remember the zenbook u500vz , if they can punch in a quad core cpu and gt650m gddr5 with a 15 inch ips screen anddual fans behind...why not??

 

Just ran it again and got P2133 - overclock mustn't have been fully activated the first time around. Still at 845Mhz max.

NVIDIA GeForce GT 640M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i5-3210M Processor,GIGABYTE U2442 score: P2133 3DMarks

Still loving the machine.